Strange Reality

Most folks never notice how easy it is to wander from one timeline to another. Some of them wind up in very strange realities. Of course, it helps to have the right equipment. That’s where I come in.

I am a scientist, or more specifically a physicist. According to quantum theory all possibilities can happen. The particle can decay at any instant or it doesn't. At least in this universe. Another universe is created when it decays and so on. Which means that every instant a Googleplex of universes are created containing each of the possible possibilities. And in each of those universes another Googleplex of universes are created. This has been going on since the beginning of time. Kind of boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

Anyways that's where I come in. I was interested in all these alternate universes and tried to find ways of looking into them. I wasn’t interested in a universe that only differed from ours by one decayed particle. No, I was looking for the big ones. Like the one where the dinosaurs never became extinct.

So, I created a device to manipulate the quantum interface that exists between realities. Starting out it wasn't much. Just a view screen that looked at through the layers of reality and into other universes. At first, I thought it wasn’t working. I was seeing the same old stuff that I saw in my own world. Then I saw it! An ad for a product that had a different name than in my world. Everything else was the same but the name. At last, I had found a different alternate reality!

I was so excited I don’t think I slept for a week. I still wanted the dinosaur world but getting it was harder than I imagined. The farther in the past I went the more difficult it became. For a long time, I satisfied myself looking at alternate histories of my world. But that got old really quickly. Like watching reruns of a TV show. I didn’t just want to see them, I wanted to experience them! To be in a world different from my own!

That’s when I constructed a way to transport objects to these other realities. I started small and I had good success. At least the space time continuum didn’t collapse in on itself. Living things like mice and rats survived the trip. Then I knew what the next step was.

My main concern was how to get back once I was in this alternate reality. So I constructed a device that when activated sent a signal back to the main controller and signaled it to retrieve the transmitter. I sent it to an alternate reality that seemed safe. A simple device activated by a timer pressed a button and the transmitter sent its signal and then re-appeared in the chamber. I was ecstatic!

For my first trial run I went to a nearby reality, one that I had seen before. I appeared in a city street, and I started looking around. I looked at the signs and names on them. Similar yet different. Then I looked at a newspaper at a newsstand and some guy I had never heard of was running for president. Also, they had three political parties!

After a few hours I became hungry and then, oh snap! My money wasn’t any good here! So I decided to return and popped back into my lab. I hadn’t thought about the money problem, and this was going to provide a hindrance to my future explorations. So I began to think about what are the universal forms of currency. Gold, silver and gems popped into my mind. Unfortunately, I was in short supply of all of the above. I could get some, but I had no idea what the exchange rates might be like in alternate realities.

I thought about this difficulty for several days. Seems kind of silly that after being able to move between alternate realities I was stopped by something as mundane as a lack of cash. So, for the time being I limited myself to short term trips. If I planned for anything longer, I packed a lunch. But that was just a temporary solution. The more I investigated these alternate worlds the more I wanted.

Also, I found out that the further away from my reality I looked the stranger it got. I had assumed that the realities occurred at the same time as my own. But I saw some that were in the past. Or at least I thought they were in the past. Still no dinosaurs but I saw what looked like colonial times in some worlds. This was more like it!

I went to this reality and popped in a street that looked like something from the old pictures of the 1700’s. Immediately people were stopping and staring at me, looking at my strange clothing. Ooops! Forgot about that. I tried to be incongruous but to no avail. After a few minutes I popped back into my own reality. If I was going to look ordinary, I had to fit in. Since I had no clothes from the 1700’s and custom-made ones would be too expensive, I looked at other venues.

I checked around and found a theatrical costume shop. I found some old outfits that looked like they might fit in with the time-period and bought them. This time I was properly attired and when I went back to the colonial world as I called it, I was ignored by everyone. Perfect. I walked around for hours, ate my lunch and returned to the lab. But before I left I saw an antique shop of sorts. I looked at the items in the shop and saw that many of them were similar to ones in my own world.

After returning to my world, I visited several antique and pawn stores and picked out various knickknacks that I thought I could trade in the colonial world. Returning to that world I went back to the antique store and sold the items I had purchased in my own world. I now had currency that was legal here and I wasn't dependent on bringing my own food. I could now buy stuff!

I spent the rest of the day walking around the city, taking in all the sights. I stopped in a local tavern and met a fellow named Ben. In the tavern over several tankards of ale, we discussed many things. He told me that he was curious to see if lightning in a thunderstorm was another form of the newly-discovered electricity, or some strange form of energy yet to be discovered. Somewhat inebriated myself I told him to go fly a kite and then left.

I made it a point to bring some antiquities from my own world and sell them in this one and buy some others every time I traveled to it. This opened up a whole new range of possibilities for me. Buy some common objects in another reality and sell them in my own reality for a big markup. I started to look at other realities further in the past and in other parts of the world, presuming that the older an object was the more it would be worth. This turned out to be true. With the cash I got from selling these rare antiquities I bought cheap gold and silver jewelry that I then used to trade with. The markup was huge, and I was soon swimming in cash in my own reality, selling these antique items. When asked where they came from, I just replied from the private collections of people who wished to remain anonymous.

Things were going along fine and then stuff started happening. At first it was small things, like me appearing at some location other than what I planned. One time I appeared in the middle of a forest. I found my way to a road and was lucky enough to hail a passing coach. I bribed the driver with a gold ring, and he took me to the next town. I’m sure I overpaid him.

The next time I got stuck in the middle of a desert. I was ready to pop back when I saw three men riding camels. I bummed a ride and rode with them until they stopped at an inn in a local town.

I couldn’t understand what was going on. All my equipment was working perfectly. So I went back to my equations and noticed a little variable that I had ignored earlier. Apparently, my trips to alternate realities were causing a dimensional imbalance. The more stuff I brought back, the worse it got.

My solution to this was to bring an equivalent amount of mass into the reality I popped into as what I planned to bring back. So now when I went back, I carried a sack of bricks or whatever, dumped them in that reality and went on with my business.

That seemed to fix the problem of the dimensional imbalance. What happened to me next was more mundane. To put it simply, I was mugged, robbed by highwaymen. Bandits, who had no idea what they were doing by taking everything I had, including my dimensional transporter! I was stuck in that reality with no way home!

I was lost, doomed to stay in this distant reality, far from my own. I figured the bandits would go to a nearby village to sell their loot. I went there too and searched all the markets and bazaars. I didn’t care about the objects I was going to sell; I just wanted the transporter. Finally, after two days of looking I saw a tent with some of the items that were stolen from me, and the transporter was with them! I was overjoyed seeing it safe and intact!

So as not to attract attention, I casually walked over to the tent and slowly looked over the items. The transporter was just out of reach in the back. It looked undamaged. I was about to grab it when someone walked up and took it off the table. He engaged in a brief, animated conversation with the proprietor, handed him some coins and then walked off with it.

I was dumbfounded. I ran after the man who had just bought my transporter and called out to him. He just hurried his pace and then broke out in an open run. I chased after him and grabbed the transporter in his hand. We struggled for a minute and then either his or my finger pressed the return button.

We immediately re-appeared in my lab. You can imagine the look on his face! He just stood there while I grabbed the transporter from his shaking hands before he could do anything more. I motioned him to a chair, and he quietly sat down, apparently in shock from his strange surroundings. I sat down in another chair by the console and thought about what to do next. Getting him back wasn’t going to be as easy as him coming here. While I was adjusting the equipment, I noticed that he was looking at my latest haul that I had left sitting in the lab. He rose from his chair and walked over to look at the vases and statues on the table. He picked one up and examined it closely. I stopped what I was doing at the console and went over and showed him some other objects. He nodded his approval and smiled at me. Then, I figured what the heck. We went upstairs and I showed him some of the choice items I kept for myself, which he smiled broadly at.

We came back to the lab, and I set the controls to return us to the same spot we had left. After transportation I could tell he was stunned to be back in the village again and probably wondered what happened to the strange room he was in. I started to walk away when he grabbed my arm and beckoned me to follow him. I was suspicious but decided to follow him anyway. He led me down a maze of streets and alleys until we came to a certain shop. Walking in I saw it was some kind of curio shop like many others I had visited before, but with higher quality items than what I had seen previously. My friend smiled and pointed out several fancy objects for me to examine.

I had some gold jewelry on me, and I held out a ring to the owner indicating I wanted to buy this statue. My friend hastily pushed me aside and started a vigorous conversation with the owner. After much talk, the two of us left with a vase and the statue, much more than what I hoped to buy with the ring. We then went to another shop and examined the owner’s goods. I indicated what I was interested in and what I had on me. He took some jewelry from my hand and then proceeded to haggle prices with the owner. We left with several fine objects, and I figured that was a good haul for one day.

I was about to return to the lab when he saw me holding the transporter. I’m sure he had no clue as to what it was, but he motioned that he wanted to join me. For some strange reason I let him do that since he seemed mostly harmless, and he had gotten me several good deals. He was surprised by the lab again when we appeared in it, but recovered quickly and helped me to put the items away.

We went upstairs and since I was hungry, I put a burrito in the microwave. He was amazed by the oven and how something heated up so quickly. I gave him this one and put in another for myself. I then poured some wine for us; Chablis goes best with nuked Mexican food. Later over several glasses I got to know this strange fella. Didn’t quite get his name right, but he accepted my attempts at it. Turns out he is a merchant, a trader in unique and valuable merchandise, obtained legally or otherwise I gathered. We made several more trips and a partnership of sorts was started which benefited us both greatly. He knew all the local languages and customs. Plus, he was a great haggler, always getting good deals for what we wanted. Our antique revenues soared, and we were both happy. With the money we made I bought a bigger place to house both of us and had a wing built especially for the lab with a vault to put our items in.

And that’s my story. I stopped looking for the reality where the dinosaurs never became extinct; no profit in that. My partner and I now travel regularly together to alternate realities, like universe traveling pirates on the seven seas of the multiverse.

THE END

Bio: "I am a beginning writer who is still learning to use my laptop and how to write for submission. This story is from the Aphelion Writers’ Challenge II webpage and has one of its narrative hooks as its first sentence. I have also had stories published in Schlock webzine and other horror anthologies."

E-mail: Randy Stuart

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